


Terminator

by ThisCat



Series: Denkatt (GG self-insert fic) [2]
Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: (through time), AU of an AU, Angst, F/M, Super angsty, roaring rampage of revenge, very non-canon, weird formatting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 09:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21034160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisCat/pseuds/ThisCat
Summary: Denkatt has been frozen a very long time.She has had the time to despair.She has had the time to rage.The rage is what sticks with her, and they are going to regret it.





	Terminator

**Author's Note:**

> (This makes no sense if you haven't already read my other dreen-gift fic.)
> 
> Someone on the discord was like, "Hey, what if they froze Denkatt on purpose, so she could be an icon for the town."  
And then I was like, "Well, for the love of god, don't let her know that. She'll be so angry."
> 
> And then I wrote it.
> 
> This is obviously super not canon within the wider Dreen Gift verse, because I haven't the faintest idea what's going to be happening with Alice's story at this point, and also obviously yeah this isn't actually happening. Just take it as it is.
> 
> (Really sorry to mobile users for that one part where the formatting does the thing.)

_Purpose._

That’s the word that sticks with her.

_Congratulations, you’ve served your purpose._

Hundreds of years, she’s been stuck in her own personal hell. Punished for not letting enough of her loved ones die. An impossible request, yes, but only emotionally.

How many thousands, millions of times has she regretted? Wanted to go back to do it over, begged to be let free.

She’s sorry. She’s sorry. She’s sorry.

Hasn’t she been punished enough?

They never even gave her proper instructions.

She has raged. She has begged. She has screamed and screamed in the silence of her own mind.

She has broken again and again. Please. Please. Please. Please.

Not forever. Please. Isn’t this enough? She’s sorry.

She’ll do it over a thousand times. She’ll do better this time. She’ll do anything.

Please.

_You’ve served your purpose._

Has she?

She has.

This was it, she realizes.

Not a punishment. This was what they meant to happen all along.

A statue, a shrine, to centre the spirit of the town around. She was always meant to be here. Screaming. Silently.

She doesn’t draw breaths anymore. She doesn’t get tired. Doesn’t sleep. Doesn’t dream.

She can scream continuously.

Despair.

She breaks, breaks again. Falls. Shatters to pieces.

Despair. Rage.

She has shattered into dust, but she cannot die.

Red hot fury fills every fracture of her soul.

How dare they. How dare they. How **dare** they.** How** **dare they. How** **_dare they._**

She screams, a wordless, soundless roar twists through her remains. She is nothing. She is fury. She is.

She is and she is.

And she is.

She is.

She.

Is.

And.

Is.

And.

Is.

.

.

.

Time stops.

Then it starts again.

She falls.

Pain shatters her. Touch destroys her. A blink drives the world away. A twitch brings it back.

She is _alive_.

She breathes. Breathes like drinking, swimming. Air is life and _she is alive_.

She is. Alive.

She shakes like a leaf, fallen on a pile of cloth and metal, accumulated over centuries, centuries. Hers. All of them.

Fitting. Yes, she needs a hat.

Her fingers close on a brim, clench too hard, too hard, and then they buzz and slip through.

She blinks at her hand. It’s her hand. She can blink. This is real. Why is she still not solid?

Phasing. Yes.

She slams her hand against the ground and phases again and

Panic.

No, not again not again not again not again not-

She’s fine.

Her hand is fine. Her other hand is holding it and is also fine. She is fine. Her heart is beating.

Her heart is beating.

Fast. The air is moving too fast.

Panic does that. Yes.

Breathe. She knows this one. Four in. No, again. Four in. Hold it.

No, try again. Four in. Hold it for eight.

Try again. In. Hold it. Out. There.

She remembers how to breathe.

In, out. In, out.

She is fine.

The wall is solid behind her. The ground is not, piled with every hat left there since they started.

She stands up. Her legs shake and it is amazing. It’s the best thing she’s ever felt. She doesn’t know what’s pain and what’s normal strain and what’s the simple pleasure of _being_ of _living_ of _moving_ and she stands up and she kicks the pile and she falls again and she rolls around and shouts! _Shouts_!

Shouts and screams, screams, roars into the tunnel.

She is alive. She is alive.

She stands up again.

Sits down. Picks up a hat. It’s blue. There are signs of a sigil that once adorned it, but now it is worn and torn.

Good.

She puts it on. It fits.

She stands up.

Then she walks.

They meet her before she makes it out of the room. Her boys. Her jägers.

Good. Good. Yes.

The hug is.

Everything. Everything. Warm. Soft. Hard. Cold buttons. Soft fur. Arms around her. She can smell his breath, hear the shifting of his clothes. Another hand on her back.

Voices. The language doesn’t parse. Concern. Bewilderment.

Her face is cold. She’s crying. Bawling into his shoulder. Shaking and crying and breathing, breathing.

She never wants to let go. He doesn’t try to make her.

Eyes closed, head resting on his shoulder, she breathes, breathes, and the cherry-red, burning rage seeps back through the cracks of her soul.

Her fingers tingle. Her bones burn. Her teeth grind together and her hands phase again, clenched so hard her fingers would break, buzzing, twitching, burning, burning.

“Hoy,” her jäger says, and he has her by the shoulders, looks at her with wide concerned eyes and the others are there, are holding her, are keeping her grounded. “You don’t look too good,” he says, and she can’t remember which language this is, but she understands him, that’s the important thing.

“I’m,” she says. “I’m, I’m breathing I’m. Here. Breathing.”

“Yea, that’s new!” he says, relentlessly optimistic. “We want to keep it that way, yea? Why don’t we go up out of here?”

Sun. Yes. No. Yes.

“Sun,” she says. She misses it. So long, she’s missed it. “Sun,” she says. She feels hot, burning rage running down her neck and through her throat. Growling, choking, “I need–”

They’re moving. Out. Up. Feet against the ground.

She has. Shoes. Of a sort. Old ones.

She tries to kick them off and she stumbles but her boys catch her and she takes them off and her toes hit the ground.

Better. Better.

“I need,” she says. _Revenge. Needs to be done, needs them gone, needs them all gone gone. Needs. Power._ “Dyne,” she says. “The Dyne, the water, under… castle. Under the castle.”

It will be enough or she will die. It will be enough. Either will be enough.

“Are you sure?” he says.

“Yes!” Loud. Louder than she wanted. Humming helps her get used to her voice again.

Her jägers are silent. They’re looking at each other. One of them nods.

She knows their names, knows them, always has.

Fabian is oldest. Grem is the one holding her like she’ll fall, the one who hugged her. Mikkel is so young, so young but old enough.

They change direction.

There are more tunnels. More up, but they never reach a surface.

There are stairs. She is slow, slow, but they, wait, they hold her arms and she climbs, feeling wood and dirt and rock under her feet and breathing tunnel air and Mechanisburg.

It’s different. Smells different, but the soil is the same, just with more things in it.

Smells wrong. Smells right. Smells home after a long time.

The rage is still there, coating her bones, crawling through her skin, flaring up to make her growl and jump to get there, get there faster.

Then.

Sunlight.

It blinds her, burns her, the noise of the surface overwhelms her and she soaks it up until it gathers in her gut, swirls around and bubbles to a boil.

She’s warm. The wind is cold. The town below her now has become a city while she wasn’t watching and she stares and stares.

Above, a castle she has never seen before, but it’s right, yes. It fits there, on her hill, overlooking her people. Knife would’ve approved.

Spear would have loved it.

“Hoy,” Mikkel says, knocking on a massive door. “The, uh, the Lady wants to come in.”

“That be as it may,” a voice from nothing says. “You can’t expect me to just….”

Nice voice. Intimidating. Familiar. She can’t remember where she’s heard it.

“You,” the voice says with surprise. “You are Denkatt. I wasn’t watching… ah, you want to come in?”

Her teeth clench. She doesn’t have the time for this, doesn’t know how much time she has at all.

“Yes. I need the spring,” she says. Talking is easier now. Moving is easier.

She’s breathing. She’s breathing.

“I… I can’t just let you go there,” says the voice.

She cries out, suddenly, violently. Slams her arms into the door so they phase halfway through before she yanks them back.

“Let me in or I’ll find it myself.”

“I… Oh… Oh _well_,” the voice says, and the door cracks open. “I _will_ tell the Mistress, however.”

She is already through the door.

Her jägers follow. Close close. Worried. She’s sorry.

It’s different. Of course it’s different. New building. New castle. Taller. Bigger. Not a rock left of the place she used to live.

She doesn’t know where the stairs are.

There must be stairs. There are always stairs. There always should be.

She knows where to go, knows where it is, but not how to get there, and she wants to claw through the stone with her fingernails, but that won’t get her there.

Fabian takes her by the arm and points at a door. “I remember,” he says. “They took me here for the draught.” And of course he does, of course they did. So many of the family did it like that, for the drama, of course, of course.

She breathes and lets him lead her, through a hallway and then down, down, down again.

“I’m really not comfortable with this, my Lady,” the voice says. The castle itself, of course. It speaks now, she remembers.

God, she’s so out of it, so unused to thinking on her feet.

“Who were you?” she asks the ceiling.

“Ah, well, I was based on the personality of Faustus Heterodyne,” the castle says. “Are you sure this can’t wait until the Mistress gets here?”

Faustus. She remembers the name, of course, but not much more. “He never did come to visit,” she muses.

They pass through a door, and she’s thrown back hundreds of years.

It’s a hall, deep and dark, larger and more cluttered than before, but still lit by the light of the Dyne. It smells like power, like ozone and metal, below the sound of rushing water and the rumble of machinery is the subliminal hum of the water itself, so faint she was never sure it was real, but it resonates with the buzzing in her limbs and any moment now she expects Arrow to sweep around a corner with mad focus in her eyes and a song on her lips.

Denkatt stumbles, chokes on loss and longing, hangs on the edge of that deep void where they should have been, eyes nearly shut so all she sees is the light of the water, tears drip from her face and run down her throat.

Grem has her again, is keeping her steady while she finds her feet on the cold stone floor. She’s freezing, ice stinging through her legs but she needs to feel it, needs to know that she still exists.

Again, she finds her balance, and she steps into the room.

Her feet lead her to the spring and she climbs over the fence to lean on the eggshell rim and look into the water.

It hasn’t changed. There’s more, now, a whole river, boiling up and out to run the town, but the water is the same, too bright, too unreal to see through. Still carrying the echo of Arrow’s hum.

Her hands are shaking against the stone. Her legs can barely keep her steady.

She knows what she needs to do, what she wants to do, and standing around won’t get it done. She steps back and looks for a bucket.

The place is large and confusing, and even with her jägers’ help, by the time she finds one, they’re no longer alone.

She steps back to the spring with a bucket hanging from her hand and several people crash down the stairs. She stops to look back at them.

The first is a woman with golden hair and a death ray in her hand, a look in her eyes that strikes Denkatt as so very Heterodyne this can be no one but the Mistress. Agatha. Yes, she has heard a lot about this one.

The second is Alice.

Denkatt can’t sense her anymore, like she could before. The mental connection must’ve broken when she unfroze, but it’s Alice. Undoubtedly and unquestionably. The only friend she’s had in centuries. She’s shaking harder now, but she’s smiling too.

“Denkatt!” Alice says. “You’re… You’re okay!”

“Alice,” Denkatt says, smiling with her teeth, even as she bends down to fill her bucket with water. “Do you know what happened?”

“The whole town was frozen in a time bubble,” Alice explains.

She steps forward, and the others let her. The jägers are silent, and Agatha looks like she’s gathering data.

“You must have unfrozen when we got it popped,” Alice says. “I… what are you doing?”

“I’m sorry, Alice,” Denkatt says, and she brings the bucket to her lips.

It tastes like death.

Like life.

It’s fresh and cold like spring water, burning like acid, heavy as lead.

It will kill her, or it will not.

She empties the bucket.

Then she fills another and does it again.

And again.

Then she drops the bucket and steps back from the spring.

She can feel it, seeping into her. It will do something soon. She needs better control than that.

Alice has her hands over her mouth.

The jägers are deathly still. They know the significance of the moment.

“Are you crazy?” Agatha asks.

“Oh yes,” Denkatt says. “Very much.”

Then she laces her fingers together and brings them down, hard enough to crack them.

For one moment, only her hands phase.

Then she cracks apart.

Her body explodes out. 

The sun runs through her blood.

She sees herself from the outside, bent back and screaming.

There’s three, four, eight, fifteen of her.

There’s one.

Power made physical drips through her pores.

Encases her like a crystal shell.

Drags through her body and twists.

Changes.

Turns.

Her hair explodes outwards, short for so long, it is short no longer.

Three of her step up to braid it, tight, heavy, three meters of braid.

Crystalline force, glowing blue-green, follows her hands, turning hair to a segmented whip.

She lets it go and it slices through the air.

Hard.

Claws grow from her fingers.

Fast.

Grasping mandibles from her mouth.

Ending in a knife.

Her rage given form.

Like a wasp’s sting.

She’s made anew.

Torn apart.

Put together.

Free.

One

by one,

her phased images

come back into herself.

One by one, she’s made whole again.

The raging sun fades from blood she no longer has, settles in her limbs, in her armour skin, in her claws and teeth.

Humming, singing with her, like Arrow in her ear.

Clearing her mind. Sharpening her senses.

She looks up, and the dark cave is clear as day.

Bands of power dance in the air above the spring. Ribbons twirl unseen around Agatha, caress the skin and bones of her jägers.

Strings of time and tether attach to Alice, and behind her, one of _them._

The Hunter strikes before she can think, the sting of her braided tail slicing through invisible strings, through fabric and veils, into a body out of time, into a heart.

It screams through non-space, twitches and falls still, coating the Hunter’s hands in what might be blood.

“Ah,” the Hunter muses. “He was right. You _can_ kill anything with a knife if you’re fast enough.”

A rabbit-fast heartbeat reaches her ears, and she looks up to see Alice, gasping. Her strings are cut, but still tangle around her, through her.

“I can’t take you home,” the Hunter says. “I’ll make sure they won’t hurt you again. Do you want to keep the phasing?”

It takes Alice a while to answer.

That’s fine. The Hunter doesn’t need to hurry anymore.

Eventually, Alice nods.

The Hunter nods back, and then turns away.

“Take care of my town,” she tells Agatha.

“You…” Agatha says, but she doesn’t get further.

“Where are you going?” Mikkel asks.

The Hunter turns to him and grins, with all her newly-sharp teeth. She’ll likely never see him again. “Hunting,” she says.

Then she raises her claws and tears through the fragile veil of reality, and disappears.

She is outside of time.

The timelines stretch like so much string, tangled upon itself and going on forever, and everywhere she looks, she can see their touch.

And then she sees them.

And, screaming, she makes chase.

They’re strong, but she’s stronger.

They’re fast, but she’s faster.

They’re scared, but she is furious, and she catches them again and again, cutting them down and tearing them up until there’s _nothing_ left, not a thing, not a touch, not a hint of _anything_ or _anyone_ to _ever touch her again_.

And when she can no longer find trace of them, when she’s cut her way through monsters and beasts that make their homes outside time itself, she dives for the strings again, hunting for more.

In one timeline, a man dropped into his favourite game is playing war with her jägers. She cuts his strings and leaves him.

In another, a gunboat filled with soldiers is out of time, lost in the stream. She cuts their strings and shunts them home.

In a third, three girls on opposing sides are having to deal with a marriage. In a fourth, a woman has to deal with politics and intrigue in a country whose language she doesn’t know.

A child, a _child_, running frustrated and confused and eventually frozen for crimes not her own, and the Hunter screams, rages in the timeless void, and cuts the whole timeline down, ripping and tearing until it never happened.

A woman frozen for love, another for duty, a third for anger and a fourth for fun and fun alone.

At the Hunter’s claws, they were never caught to begin with.

Time does not exist.

She is done in the space between two moments.

Only then does she search out the last. The root of their touch, the source of her sorrow.

One timeline in billions. She finds it like she finds the back of her hand.

At one point. One place. One time.

A man, working in his lab.

Behind him, his creation, unseen, unheard, fighting built-in orders, raising a weapon.

The creature is dead before its next heartbeat.

The Hunter ensures it.

Then she looks up, into his surprised eyes, and her heart breaks all over again.

He’s here.

He’s alive.

He’s _here_ and he’s _alive_ and _safe_.

The last of her anger drains away and she steps toward him, reaches out with desperate hands, grasping, hoping, almost begging for touch.

“Jay?” he says, bewildered, and catches her.

He holds her close, presses her to his chest, and her crystal skin can hold worlds, but she feels like she's shattering.

“Jay, what’s this? It’s amazing!”

It takes her so, so long to suss out which language she should be using, but she succeeds. “No more mind control,” she says.

“What?”

She grabs onto him, careful, so careful not to hurt him, but this is important. This is the most important thing.

“No more mind control. No more forcing people to follow you. It doesn’t work and it will kill you and please, _please_.”

“Okay!” he says, grabbing back, so eager to understand. “I promise.”

“Spear, _please_,” she begs, voice breaking into a sob.

“I swear,” he says, properly serious now. “I… I’ll find volunteers. It’ll be a challenge!”

Pure relief. Love and relief washes through her, and she closes her eyes, falls against his chest and cries, bone-deep and tired tears.

“What the _hell_,” she hears him whisper as he holds her.

And then.

Then Arrow crashes into the room, and behind her, Denkatt. The actual Jay. The one who belongs her. The one with the heart, the future.

“Whoa, what?” Spear says, and lets her go in surprise.

As his arms leave her, the Hunter turns around. She looks her younger twin in the eyes, sees the threads binding her, sees the look of confusion and then recognition in her eyes.

“Tell them everything,” the Hunter says.

Then she cuts her own threads.

And falls for the last time.


End file.
